how to do it in Excel
One common piece of feedback I get after presenting on the topic of data visualization goes something like this: Wow, that was super useful. I'm never going to use pie charts again. But when it comes to the graphs, how do you actually make them look like that? I'm not Excel-savvy...help! Let me take a few minutes to walk step-by-step through an example to expose those who question their Excel expertise to some of my tricks.
crushing on your data viz
I like the idea of "crushing" on one's data viz. I find myself saying this again and again, but plotting data in a graphing program should be the first step in data visualization, not the last. After doing that, in this post I outline the typical steps I find myself going through and questions I routinely ask to get to the final ready-for-consumption visual.